fix hermit `text file busy` issues on linux #5372

The-Best-Codes · 2025-10-25T02:49:44Z

Summary

For several months, Linux users have frequently been unable to add STDIO MCP extensions (e.g., extensions using the npx command, etc.). Obviously this is a key functionality and affects a lot of MCP servers!

The goose setup script fails on Linux with a text file busy error. I suspect this is because Hermit tries to self-update its running binary, which Linux locks, unlike macOS. The fix uses a temporary bin/hermit copy on Linux to prevent lock conflicts, redirects activation output to a log file for clean stderr, and skips these changes on macOS to preserve existing behavior.

Type of Change

Testing

I've manually tested this on Linux. I need a macOS user to test these changes. Steps to test on macOS:

Checkout the PR locally or open it in a codespace. To check out the PR locally, ensure you have the GitHub CLI installed, then run gh pr checkout 5372 in the goose directory. To open the PR in a codespace, view the PR in GitHub and click Code in the top right of the PR, then Codespaces > Create codespace on best/fix-hermit-lock.
Disable & enable a STDIO MCP server. You can do this in goose desktop by running just run-ui from the goose directory to start the desktop UI, then navigating to Extensions in the sidebar. Once there, find any MCP server that uses an STDIO command such as npx, disable it, and enable it again. If you don't see any MCP servers that use npx, add a new one, npx -y @angiejones/mcp-selenium for example. If you see an error, please report it to me! If not, everything should be fine. Play around with goose a bit to make sure.
If you are using a codespace, you will need to test using the goose CLI.

Related Issues

Relates to #2351, #5048, #3030

Signed-off-by: The-Best-Codes <[email protected]>

The-Best-Codes

Ready for review!

The-Best-Codes · 2025-10-25T02:51:51Z

⚠️ This PR is ready for review, but do not merge it. It needs to be tested on macOS.

IA386 · 2025-10-25T08:11:34Z

This issue also affects jbang and uvx scripts.
The implementation should only run if Hermit is not installed — inside this block:

# Check if Hermit binary exists and download if not
if [ ! -f ~/.config/goose/mcp-hermit/bin/hermit ]; then

The “text file busy” lock issue occurs only on the first start, when Hermit is not yet installed.

The-Best-Codes · 2025-10-25T15:09:46Z

@IA386 Yep I'm aware that is affects uvx STDIO servers as well… haven't tested with jbang but it should resolve issues with it as well.

The “text file busy” lock issue occurs only on the first start, when Hermit is not yet installed.

This is what I thought at first but not what I experienced in my testing, possibly because cleanup doesn't happen properly on failure, and it gets stuck in a “locked” state after that? Not sure.

IA386 · 2025-10-26T12:38:52Z

At least to my understanding of the issue, there’s no cleanup process involved — the binary just dies. Your solution won’t work if someone tries to run it for the first time with a uvx-based MCP or jbang (haven’t seen any MCPs available, but I haven’t really looked either).

So in its current form, this PR doesn’t fully address the issue across different environments unless those scripts are updated as well.

Regarding the implementation — I don’t like that it will execute every time. On a successful install, subsequent runs will still copy an already replaced bin/hermit script.

If I can make a suggestion — please see my comment on #2351. I’m not completely happy with that approach either, but it only triggers once, while the Hermit environment is not yet bootstrapped.

IMHO, the best solution would be to keep the binary with its original name inside the mcp-hermit folder and leave it as is.

ui/desktop/src/bin/node-setup-common.sh

rinormaloku · 2025-10-31T19:23:27Z

Looking forward to a fix on this issue, it is making this unusable in linux.

Signed-off-by: The-Best-Codes <[email protected]>

The-Best-Codes

Changes are ready for review.

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alexhancock · 2025-11-03T17:37:36Z

Nice. Thanks for the revisions on this @The-Best-Codes

* 'main' of github.com:block/goose: (21 commits) Manual compaction counting fix + cli cleanup (#5480) chore(deps): bump prismjs and react-syntax-highlighter in /ui/desktop (#5549) fix: remove qwen3-coder from provider/mcp smoke tests (#5551) fix: do not build unsigned desktop app bundles on every PR in ci. add manual option. (#5550) fix: update Husky prepare script to v9 format (#5522) Fix 404 for responsible coding guide (#5543) fix hermit `text file busy` issues on linux (#5372) Fix image processing (#5544) docs: AI attribution for PRs (#5547) chore(tests/mcp): testing for MCP sampling (#5456) docs: adding HOWTOAI.md (#5533) added configuration content, also added signoff, fix merging issue with another commit by creating a clean branch. removed and closed commits that caused signoff issues. (#5519) Fixes Gemini API parse issue by converting nullable type arrays to single types in tool schemas (#5530) Troubleshooting diagnostics doc (#5526) fix link to Ollama FAQ (#5531) docs: remove speech-mcp (#5514) fix: adds ProviderRetry to openai provider (#5518) docs: extensions directory minor updates (#5466) Docs/json recipe support (#5492) docs: recipe buttons (#5507) ...

Signed-off-by: The-Best-Codes <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: fbalicchia <[email protected]>

rinormaloku · 2025-11-07T15:51:06Z

Note: After upgrading I had to delete the mcp hermit directory and then it worked: rm -rf ~/.config/goose/mcp-hermit

The-Best-Codes · 2025-11-07T16:17:44Z

@rinormaloku Yep 💯
I was waiting for the next official release of goose so I could clarify that in the Discord. I should have clarified it here. Thanks!

rinormaloku · 2025-11-07T16:44:55Z

Thanks for contributing this fix @The-Best-Codes

Signed-off-by: The-Best-Codes <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: Blair Allan <[email protected]>

The-Best-Codes added 2 commits October 24, 2025 21:25

fix: resolve hermit self-update issues on linux

daa27fe

Signed-off-by: The-Best-Codes <[email protected]>

fix: only apply fix on linux

0911b5c

Signed-off-by: The-Best-Codes <[email protected]>

The-Best-Codes commented Oct 25, 2025

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The-Best-Codes marked this pull request as ready for review October 25, 2025 02:51

alexhancock reviewed Oct 29, 2025

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ui/desktop/src/bin/node-setup-common.sh Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

fix: make logic clearer

2b0639b

Signed-off-by: The-Best-Codes <[email protected]>

The-Best-Codes commented Oct 31, 2025

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angiejones requested a review from Copilot November 2, 2025 19:12

Copilot AI reviewed Nov 2, 2025

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angiejones requested a review from Copilot November 2, 2025 19:20

Copilot AI reviewed Nov 2, 2025

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angiejones assigned alexhancock Nov 2, 2025

alexhancock approved these changes Nov 3, 2025

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alexhancock merged commit bb2c27b into block:main Nov 3, 2025
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The-Best-Codes deleted the best/fix-hermit-lock branch November 3, 2025 17:49

github-actions bot mentioned this pull request Nov 5, 2025

chore(release): release version 1.13.0 (minor) #5582

Merged

fbalicchia pushed a commit to fbalicchia/goose that referenced this pull request Nov 7, 2025

fix hermit text file busy issues on linux (block#5372)

dcf50dd

Signed-off-by: The-Best-Codes <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: fbalicchia <[email protected]>

This was referenced Nov 10, 2025

Bug: Unable to add extension on linux #2351

Closed

any MCP server extensions I add to the goose config fail to start when running goose UI #5048

Closed

The-Best-Codes mentioned this pull request Nov 14, 2025

fix: add one-time cleanup for linux hermit locking issues #5742

Merged

10 tasks

BlairAllan pushed a commit to BlairAllan/goose that referenced this pull request Nov 29, 2025

fix hermit text file busy issues on linux (block#5372)

7e5d9e4

Signed-off-by: The-Best-Codes <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: Blair Allan <[email protected]>

fix hermit text file busy issues on linux #5372

fix hermit text file busy issues on linux #5372

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Type of Change

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The-Best-Codes commented Oct 25, 2025

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fix hermit `text file busy` issues on linux #5372

fix hermit `text file busy` issues on linux #5372

The-Best-Codes commented Oct 25, 2025 •

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